Brine shrimp production

I did this in a fairly vanilla and ineffective way. Three plastic containers were suspended in a 10-gallon tank heated to about 85 degrees Fahrenheit and brightly lit. The plastic containers had a brine solution in them (slightly more than one-fourth cup rock salt per gallon of water) that was vigorously aerated. I started a new batch of shrimp in one of the containers about every 12 hours and usually reused the water for 2 or 3 batches. I increased the amount of eggs in each batch as the demand increased.

I started with a one pound can of brine shrimp eggs and used about half of it for this huge spawn by the time I weaned the fry completely off shrimp at 6 weeks. I’m sure I could have used more if I could have fed more frequently. One problem I ran into was that the size of the brine shrimp batches became too large for the capacity of my one-gallon plastic containers towards the end. The result of this was that I was having trouble keeping the eggs properly agitated and a couple of times a batch "crashed" with a very low hatch out.

Other problems:

To harvest the shrimp, I turned off the aeration and put a light near the bottom of the container. The egg shells floated to the top and the shrimp sank and went towards the light. I then used a baster (actually a big irrigation syringe) to suck up the shrimp. This was then squirted out into a brine shrimp net to catch the shrimp and drain the brine solution.

Above: My setup for hatching out brine shrimp. Note the salt everywhere.

For really great information on brine shrimp and their culture, check out the excellent "Artemia FAQ":


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